


i could never give it up

by skyparents



Series: of jack o'lanterns and crescent moons (halloween 2019) [6]
Category: Ant-Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: A Week of Halloween, Everyone has a lot of opinions, F/M, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Hope is definitely not allowed to have an opinion on this matter, Post-Ant-Man (2015), Pre-Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), Pre-Civil War (Marvel), Pushing my anti-Kate Austen agenda, Star Wars References, Trick or Treating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 02:10:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21236408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyparents/pseuds/skyparents
Summary: the guys come over to talk business planning, a new venture scott and luis have come up with, and cassie tries to get them all to vote on hope’s costume. “why don’t you just let hope be the tiebreaker?” asks dave, leaning back in his chair so the front legs lift slightly off the floor. “since it’s her, and all.” which is a nice thought, really, but it’s not an option, according to cassie.or, hope gets absolutely no say in who (or what) she's dressing up as for halloween. and everyone has a lot of opinions. can be read as a standalone, but works really nicely as a follow-up toi don't know about these heavy hands.





	i could never give it up

**Author's Note:**

> this is the second-last halloween prompt i've got for this collection, and the last scotthope one! it's technically a standalone, as all of these are, but i purposefully wrote it so that it can be connected to _i don't know about these heavy hands,_ which you can read [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21205820). we can all thank jan for this prompt, which she sent in on curious cat and allowed me to put an awful lot of fluff and star wars things into.
> 
> **prompt:** 2015!scotthope. their first halloween as a couple. scott wants to invite hope for trick or treating with cassie, but cassie won't let hope come along unless she wears a costume.
> 
> cutting this one a little close, but it's still 8 minutes to midnight here, so we'll still count it as being posted on the right day. my bad, guys. i wrote every single word of this today and it did not even get a read-through's worth of editing. whoops.

This was  _ so _ not the plan.

It’s one thing to have let Scott talk her into going trick-or-treating with him and Cassie – which, to be fair, she fought against valiantly for a whole afternoon – but  _ this? _ She doesn’t like Halloween even from afar, if she’s being honest. Her mom was good at it; her father was decidedly not. Maybe they are slowly mending their relationship now, but they are far from fixed just yet, and she is absolutely too old for him to make up for that now. Which is exactly how Scott managed to coerce her into saying yes: He looked at her seriously and told her he wanted to help make Halloween into a holiday she  _ likes _ again.

What Hope van Dyne  _ didn’t _ account for was Cassie crossing her arms and saying firmly, “Okay. Yeah, you can come. On  _ one condition,” _ and it feels like she’s holding her breath as she waits for the other shoe to drop. And then Cassie says, very decisively, “You have to wear a costume.”

“Absolutely not,” says Hope on a long-suffering sigh. She has learned that this is a tone she must take on fairly regularly when she is around the both of them together, though it doesn’t annoy her like she thought it might. Instead, it almost feels comfortable, which is downright terrifying in its own right. “No costume.”

Scott actually  _ wags his finger _ at her. “Now, now, Hope, you already said yes!” He’s grinning broadly, likes this development more than she wants him to.

She tries to protest that it doesn’t count – because the condition hadn’t even been suggested when she agreed to go – but neither he nor his daughter are listening to her. They’re already deep in a semi-heated discussion about who or what Hope is supposed to dress up as, as if she’s agreed to that and as if it’s not a conversation she should be a part of.

This doesn’t annoy her like she thought it would, either. Like it  _ should.  _ Hope likes to have a say in everything, but she finds that she doesn’t mind this so much. She softens there in the kitchen as they brainstorm ideas, resigning herself to this Halloween being different than every other one since her mother disappeared.

The prime costume candidates are Wonder Woman and Rowena Ravenclaw. Scott is firmly pulling for the first option, which he swears has nothing to do with the short skirt; he settled on this as his choice when Hope immediately vetoed one of his earlier suggestions (“How about, like, a sexy Snow White?” he asked cheekily, and she threw a pillow at him while Cassie pretended to choke on her cereal, and that was that). Cassie, meanwhile, has been reading all the Harry Potter books and is adamant that the founder of Ravenclaw is the best possible option.

“Isn’t she old? And dead?” asks Scott, frowning at the suggestion. “Why not someone cooler and more recognizable? What about Hermione?”

Cassie rolls her eyes so exaggeratedly that her head moves along with it. “Hermione is  _ so _ overdone, Daddy,” she sighs, like she can’t believe he would  _ possibly  _ suggest such a thing. “Rowena Ravenclaw is super cool. And smart. And Hope is smart!”

They go shopping for costumes and still cannot decide; Hope leaves each store empty-handed, while her boyfriend and his daughter begin to build the perfect pieces of their own outfits. Cassie hops onto the couch while Scott is cooking dinner (he’s a surprisingly good cook, which she didn’t expect but makes at least a little bit of sense because he’s constantly catching Hope off-guard like that), holds out her dad’s phone with a picture of Princess Leia on the screen, and asks Hope to twist space buns into her hair. “It has to be perfect. Like the picture,” she reminds Hope six times before she’s finished. She stands and walks slowly to the bathroom when Hope is done, overwhelmingly careful so she does not ruin her hair before she can see it in the mirror over the sink.  _ Screams _ so it echoes back out into the living room and reappears, smiling toothily, to announce, “It’s perfect, just like I wanted! Will you do it again on Halloween?” Hope can only nod, feeling something soft and warm light in her chest at the elated expression on the girl’s face.

The guys come over to talk business planning, a new venture Scott and Luis have come up with since particular parts of their histories don’t exactly excite most potential employers. Cassie tries to get them all to vote on Hope’s costume, dragging Hope to stand in front of them as they eye her critically. “Why don’t you just let Hope be the tiebreaker?” asks Dave, leaning back in his chair so the front legs lift slightly off the floor. “Since it’s her, and all.”

Which is a nice thought, really, but it’s not an option, according to Cassie. “Hope doesn’t want to dress up at all.” She shakes her head emphatically. “You have to vote.”

Dave shrugs, gives in because Hope is pretty sure the girl has all of them wrapped right around her little finger. “I vote Ravenclaw, then. Harry Potter’s the sh– it’s great, I mean,” he amends quickly as Scott casts him a warning look.

Kurt deliberates over his answer for far too long, and Hope has a feeling he chooses Wonder Woman simply because he doesn’t want to make Scott feel too left out. Both Scott and Cassie turn apprehensively to Luis, who makes a show of stroking his chin and muttering to himself. “I’ve got it,” he says triumphantly, “Lara Croft!”

“What the hell, man,” and Scott is throwing his arms up into the air, shaking his head. “You’re supposed to vote for one of the  _ existing _ options!”

Luis shakes his head, too, unapologetic. “Nah, bro. Hope is, like, the perfect Lara Croft.” And he refuses entirely to cast a vote, which leaves them at a standstill again.

One week to go until Halloween; Maggie and Paxton come over for dinner. They do this every Sunday, flocking to whichever house Cassie is at, at the time. Hope doesn’t think she has ever seen a family rattled by divorce come back together so fluidly, though she doesn’t have a lot of experience with broken families. She and her father were too few and too fractured to count in the way she’s thinking now. It’s almost miraculous, the way that Cassie’s three parental figures fit in around each other like puzzle pieces. There were some difficulties in the beginning, when Scott got out of prison, Hope knows – but in the time since the Pym Tech fiasco with Darren, they have been steadily sorting things out. They all cook, separating the meal into three parts so each one of them has something to do, and usher Hope out of their way to sit at the kitchen table where she cannot touch anything (which is probably for the best).

Cassie sits next to her; her feet don’t touch the floor, and she swings them energetically underneath her chair. “We need you guys to vote on Hope’s costume,” she says importantly, and lays out the options. Which are still just Wonder Woman and Rowena Ravenclaw; together, she and her dad have elected not to include Luis’ suggestion. “It’s  _ really _ important.”

Neither Maggie or Paxton cast a vote, official or not. Instead, they pitch new ideas, half-focused on the meal they’re preparing. “Lois Lane?” says Paxton, eying Hope thoughtfully as he dices tomatoes. “Oh, or maybe that one chick from Lost – you know, doesn’t she look sort of like her?”

Scott actually scoffs from his position at the stove, sauteing onions. “No way. Kate’s the worst,” he counters, which doesn’t exactly cancel out Paxton’s point. “When me and Maggie watched that show, we hated her. Right, Maggie?”

On a shrug, Paxton tilts the cutting board to slide all the tomatoes into a bowl. “I thought she was kind of cool,” he comments. Light, airy.

“Maggie,” says Scott, very seriously, turning away from the stove to catch her attention, “I say this as your friend, and the first love of your life. Your fiancé is an asshat.” He says this occasionally, anytime he and Paxton have a minor disagreement; Hope gets the feeling it started as something he meant, and became a joke later on. Now, the three of them all flash a grin, share a quick little laugh about it, and move on.

The blonde looks from her daughter to Hope, clearly trying to brainstorm more ideas. “What about someone from Star Wars? Maybe Padmé?” she asks, and Hope’s immediate gut instinct is,  _ Not a chance. _ She already feels strange enough about intruding on her boyfriend’s first Halloween in years with his daughter, but to plan out matching costumes feels almost cheap.

But, hey, she does like Star Wars.

In the end, they decide against Padmé. This is not because of the Star Wars thing – rather, it’s because Cassie starts talking about her own costume and begins spouting off Princess Leia quotes at random. “Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?” she asks her father critically, and then it’s all “Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way?” and “Into the garbage chute, fly-boy!” At some point, she recites the speech that plays on the hologram in the first movie. “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope,” and then she dissolves into a fit of giggles and elbows Hope repeatedly. “Get it? Get it? You’re my only  _ Hope!” _

Scott has frozen across the kitchen. “That’s it,” he says after a long, drawn-out pause. “God, that’s it – that’s the costume. She’s got to be Obi-Wan.”

And so, on the last night of October, Hope finds herself shrugging a long brown robe over her shoulders, pulling the hood up and clipping a fake lightsaber to her belt. Scott is stalking around the house with a black cape billowing out behind him, practicing loud breathing despite the fact that the Darth Vader mask he’s got sitting by the front door definitely makes sound effects all on its own with a simple press of a button. When Hope comes down, he stops at the foot of the stairs to look her costume over appreciatively.

Boldly, Hope narrows her eyes at him. “It’s over, Anakin. I have the higher ground.”

His eyes positively light up. “Damn. I think you’re my dream woman.”

**Author's Note:**

> god, i've really missed writing these two an awful lot. i just want to say i do have other things planned for them, that i'll hopefully get around to figuring out soon – so keep an eye out for those, subscribe, etc. other than that... comments and kudos make me happy! just if you have a moment to do the thing. if you want to, you can follow me on twitter – @deboceans! thank you for reading!


End file.
